Page 78 of A Witchy Spell Ride
Bones rocked on his heels. “So, vent.”
“So, vent,” Ghost echoed. He looked at me. “You good to watch Cross work or you want to go back to bed?”
I let my eyes slide slow down his body and back up, just to see his mouth want to smile and fail. “Tempting,” I said. “Work now. Bed later.”
“Copy that,” he said, voice a shade lower.
We spent twenty minutes with Cross on a step ladder, muttering happily at screws that didn’t want to be unscrewed. He slid the grate free with the satisfaction of a man removing a mask. Inside: dust, an old bottle cap, the stub of a cigarette from an era before Reaper instituted the smoke outside or die rule. And on the inner lip, a faint, fresh smear.
Cross swabbed it, face grave with glee. “Skin oil. Maybe trace floral. If he handled the petal too long.”
“Can you pull a print?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said, which from Cross meant probably.
We resecured the grate. Cross labeled vials. Bones promised to go snake through the crawl space once he’d retrieved what he called hisworm pants.Vex popped his head in to report thatDaisy wanted to staple bats to the ceiling and asked if that was a fire hazard or a festive hazard. Ghost told him yes.
It should’ve felt like a bad morning. It didn’t.
Because I wasn’t the girl being acted upon anymore. I wasin it.Hands dirty. Voice steady. Fear present but not the loudest thing in the room.
Back in Ghost’s doorway, I paused. He was a step behind me, heat a respectful distance from my spine.
“You really, okay?” he asked.
I turned. “Better than okay.”
His eyes flicked to the shirt hanging on me like a crime. “That’s mine.”
“I noticed,” I said. “Fits.”
He looked like he wanted to kiss me and didn’t because we had a hallway and a camera and a club to run. Instead, he took my hand, flipped my palm up, and pressed a kiss to the center of it, quick, discreet, devastating.
“Shower,” he said. “Food. Then we set charms where Cross can’t.”
“Yes, sir,” I said just to watch him pretend not to react tosir. It worked too well. He cleared his throat, eyes amused and not.
“Go, witch,” he said, softly smug. “I’ll make the coffee that doesn’t taste like Vex’s motor oil.”
I showered with the door cracked and Briar on the other side narrating an article about haunted dolls. “Apparently, Annabelle was a raggedy—”
“Don’t care,” I said through toothpaste.
“Fine,” she said cheerfully. “I will simply bring one home.”
“Briar.”
“Kidding.” A beat. “Mostly.”
After, I dressed for the day like a small, private ritual. Black jeans. Tank. The coin pendant under my shirt where it could warm against my skin. Knives in familiar spots. I braided my shorter hair back from my face and drew a small protection sigil behind each ear with eyeliner. When I stepped out, Briar looked me up and down and nodded. “Sharp.”
“Always.”
We laid charms in the places Cross’s cameras couldn’t see: the inside of a lamp base, the underside of the stair rail, the third tile in the hall that always wobbled. Little things. Bells on invisible lines. Chalk where only a thumb would smudge it. Stories, really, you tell the building what you need from it and sometimes it listens.
By midmorning, the clubhouse woke all the way. The band texted to confirm load-in times for the party; Daisy announced a glitter emergency; Ash threatened to set the glitter on fire and Daisy threatened to setAshon fire and Reaper didn’t threaten anything because his eyebrow did it for him. The air felt…normal. Not the normal from before, maybe, but a normal we’d chosen.
When Reaper finally cornered me in the hallway because of course he did, I was ready. He glanced at the security camera and then at the crushed petal in the little plastic bag Cross had given me.
